Symbols
92Click a symbol to copy it and open its page.
Kaqchikel alphabet
Capital and small letters in Kaqchikel order, with the five vowels that take a diaeresis lined up on the right. Kaqchikel also counts ch, tz and the glottalized b' ch' k' q' t' tz' as single letters: type them as two or three keys from this grid. C, H and Z appear only inside ch and tz; D, F, G, V and Ñ only in Spanish names and loanwords.
The glottal mark
The apostrophe that makes b' ch' k' q' t' tz' and stands alone for the glottal stop. The ALMG prints the plain '; ʼ is the Unicode letter apostrophe; ’ is what phones and word processors put in by themselves.
Punctuation
Kaqchikel follows Spanish punctuation, so questions and exclamations open upside down.
Where it's spoken
The central highlands of Guatemala. Money is the quetzal, written with the plain letter Q from the alphabet above: Q25.
Colonial letters
Letters that Spanish friars invented for the Maya consonants Latin had no letter for, shaped like the numerals 3 and 4. They are history now: today's Kaqchikel writes those sounds with q, k, tz and the apostrophe.
Maya numerals
Dots are ones, bars are fives, the shell is zero. Kaqchikel number words count in twenties, like the numerals.
The Kaqchikel world
Ixim, maize, and wäy, the tortilla; the volcanoes of the highlands and Lake Atitlán; backstrap weaving; the giant kites of Sumpango; and the old Kaqchikel chronicles.
On the map
Loading…
The Kaqchikel alphabet, letter by letter
Kaqchikel is a Maya language of the K'iche' branch, spoken in the central highlands of Guatemala. It is written in the unified alphabet that Guatemala made official for its Maya languages in 1987 and that the Academia de Lenguas Mayas de Guatemala (ALMG) looks after, which gives every sound one fixed spelling. The older Spanish spelling of the name, Cakchiquel, comes from before that reform; Kaqchikel is how its speakers write it now.
In Kaqchikel's own order the letters are a, ä, b', ch, ch', e, ë, i, ï, j, k, k', l, m, n, o, ö, p, q, q', r, s, t, t', tz, tz', u, ü, w, x, y and the glottal stop '. So ch and tz count as single letters, and so does every consonant with an apostrophe. C, H and Z never appear on their own; they live only inside ch and tz. D, F, G, V and Ñ turn up only in Spanish names and loanwords, which is why the grid above leaves them out.
Several letters do not sound the way Spanish or English readers expect. x is the sh of English shoe; j is the throaty sound of Spanish j; w is the English w; tz is the ts of cats; and q is a k made further back, in the throat, a sound English does not have. Q is never followed by a silent u as in Spanish que, so the name is said roughly kahk-chee-KEL, with the back q in the first syllable and the stress at the end, where Kaqchikel words normally take it.
What the dots on ä ë ï ö ü mean in Kaqchikel
Kaqchikel writes ten vowels: five plain ones, a e i o u, and five with a diaeresis, ä ë ï ö ü. The dots do not mean the German sounds. They mark the relaxed (lax) vowels, which are shorter and more central than the plain ones, and they are part of the spelling, as in ch'ab'äl, language, wäy, tortilla, and ixöq, woman.
How the relaxed vowels sound depends on the town. In much of the Kaqchikel area ä is a schwa, close to the a of English about, and it is a very frequent letter; in some places the others have merged with the plain vowels. That is why you will see the same word written with and without its dots, such as matyöx and matyox for 'thank you'. School books and the ALMG keep all five.
What the apostrophe does in b' ch' k' q' t' tz'
The apostrophe is a letter in Kaqchikel, not decoration. After ch k q t tz it marks an ejective: the throat closes, the air in the mouth is squeezed, and the consonant comes out with a small pop. After b it marks the Maya b, said with the throat closed and the air drawn in, so a plain b without an apostrophe is not a Kaqchikel letter. On its own, between vowels or at the end of a word, ' is the glottal stop, the catch in the middle of English uh-oh, as at the end of ya', water.
Three characters look like it. The plain typewriter apostrophe ' is the one the ALMG prints and every keyboard has, the safe choice for school work, messages and anything people will search for. The modifier letter apostrophe ʼ is the Unicode character made for a glottal stop inside a word, so software keeps a word written with it in one piece. The curly ’ is Unicode’s right single quotation mark, which also serves as a punctuation apostrophe; phones and word processors often swap it in by themselves. They read the same, but q'ij and q’ij are two different strings to a computer, so pick one and keep it through the whole text.
How to type ä ë ï ö ü, the apostrophe and ¿ ¡
On a phone, hold the vowel down and slide to ä, ë, ï, ö or ü. On a Mac, press OptionU, let go, then type the vowel; Shift with the vowel gives the capital, Ä. On Windows with the US-International layout, type " and then the vowel. On the Latin American and Spanish layouts used in Guatemala, is a dead key: Shift with the accent key, then the vowel. In Microsoft Word, CtrlShift: followed by the vowel works on any layout.
Windows Alt codes on the number pad are Alt0228 ä, Alt0235 ë, Alt0239 ï, Alt0246 ö and Alt0252 ü, and Alt0196, 0203, 0207, 0214 and 0220 for Ä Ë Ï Ö Ü. The straight ' has a key of its own; for ʼ type 02BC and press AltX in Word; the curly ’ is Alt0146 or OptionShift]. On a US keyboard ¿ is Alt0191 and ¡ Alt0161, or OptionShift? and Option1 on a Mac. In HTML they are ä ë ï ö ü, ʼ for ʼ, ¿ and ¡. Or copy them from the grid above.
Where the Kaqchikel language is spoken
The Kaqchikel language is spoken in Guatemala , in the highlands west of Guatemala City: in Chimaltenango, Sacatepéquez around Antigua, Sololá on the shores of Lake Atitlán , and the western part of the department of Guatemala, in towns such as Tecpán, Comalapa, Patzún, Sumpango, San Juan Sacatepéquez, Sololá and Panajachel. CLDR estimates about 1.6 million speakers, which puts it with K'iche', Q'eqchi' and Mam among the biggest Maya languages. Most speakers also speak Spanish, so Kaqchikel texts open questions and exclamations with ¿ and ¡, and prices are written in quetzales with a plain Q, Q25.
Kaqchikel's closest relatives are Tz'utujil, spoken across Lake Atitlán, and K'iche', from which the Kaqchikel broke away to found their own capital, Iximche', around 1470. The K'iche', Achi, Q'eqchi', Poqomchi' and Mam collections cover the neighbours, all written with the same apostrophe, and the Guatemala collection has the country's flag, food and other emoji. The best-known old text in the language is the Annals of the Kaqchikels , also called the Memorial de Sololá, a chronicle written in Kaqchikel with Latin letters after the Spanish conquest.
How to use them
5 situationsClick to copyKaqchikel Alphabet & Letters combos
13Worth knowing
- The Annals of the Kaqchikels , written by members of the Kaqchikel Xajil lineage, tell the Spanish conquest of Guatemala from the side of the conquered, in their own language and in the Latin letters the friars had brought.
- Iximche', the Kaqchikel capital near Tecpán, is where the Spanish founded their first capital of Guatemala in July 1524. The Kaqchikel had allied with the conquerors against the K'iche', then rose against them within months and left the city.
- Before the modern alphabet, the 16th-century Franciscan friar Francisco de la Parra introduced special letters for Maya sounds, including the tresillo ꜫ and the cuatrillo ꜭ, shaped like the digits 3 and 4. Unicode encodes them today so that the old manuscripts can be typed as they were written.
- In the Kaqchikel town of Sumpango, families fly kites several metres across in the field beside the cemetery on 1 November, All Saints' Day , a custom understood as a way of reaching the dead.
- The Maya numerals 𝋠 to 𝋳 entered Unicode only in 2018, in version 11.0, and few fonts draw them, so they may show as boxes on older systems.
Questions people ask
8What is the Kaqchikel alphabet?
The Latin letters a, ä, b', ch, ch', e, ë, i, ï, j, k, k', l, m, n, o, ö, p, q, q', r, s, t, t', tz, tz', u, ü, w, x, y and the glottal stop ', in the unified spelling of Guatemala's Maya languages. The vowels with dots are the relaxed vowels; the apostrophe marks the glottalized consonants and the glottal stop.
What do the two dots over vowels mean in Kaqchikel?
They mark the relaxed (lax) vowels ä ë ï ö ü, which are shorter and more central than plain a e i o u. In many towns ä sounds like the a in English 'about'. They are not the German umlaut sounds.
How do you say hello in Kaqchikel?
In the morning people say Xseqër!, and '¿La ütz awäch?' asks how you are; the answer is 'Ütz, matyöx', fine, thank you. Greetings and spellings vary somewhat from town to town.
How do you count to ten in Kaqchikel?
Jun, ka'i', oxi', kaji', wo'o', waqi', wuqu', waqxaqi', b'eleje', lajuj. Like the Maya numerals, Kaqchikel counting goes on in twenties.
Where is Kaqchikel spoken?
In the central highlands of Guatemala: Chimaltenango, Sacatepéquez, Sololá and the western part of the department of Guatemala. CLDR estimates about 1.6 million speakers.
Is Kaqchikel the same as Cakchiquel?
Yes. Cakchiquel is the older Spanish-based spelling of the same name; Kaqchikel is the spelling of the unified Maya alphabet, used by its speakers and by the ALMG.
How do you pronounce Kaqchikel?
Roughly kahk-chee-KEL, with the stress on the last syllable. The q is a k made further back in the throat, and ch is as in English 'church'.
How do I type ä ö ü on a keyboard?
On Windows, Alt0228 ä, Alt0246 ö, Alt0252 ü (Alt0235 ë, Alt0239 ï), or " then the vowel on US-International; on a Mac, OptionU then the vowel; on a phone, long-press the vowel. Or copy them from this page.
